McClure's Magazine/Volume 133/Number 2/Four o'Clock in the Morning

by Hulbert Footner

 

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

BY

HULBERT FOOTNER

ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. MOWAT

IN Haverland, one of the ancient Dutch towns on Long Island included in the metropolitan boundaries, there stands, under the magnificent elms on the edge of a little green where three streets converge, a lunch wagon. Presumably it is open for business during the day; but no sign of activity can be perceived through the windows, which are of colored glass, and one hesitates to enter a place of so gypsy a character in broad daylight. After dark, however, the red panes shine with a lurid boldness, and late at night, especially on a cold night, a savory emanation of hot coffee and fried onions is likely to tempt the most respectable citizen to sample the hospitality within.

The lunch wagon is presided over during the long hours of the night by Mat Lennon, a thorough-going lad of seventeen, who sizes up his customers warily and, when there are none, fills the van with the sound of his cheerful whistling. That his occupation has a romantic side never occurs to Mat; the mystery of the dark, the stillness, and the remote stars is non-existent for him, who never puts his nose outside the little door during his hours on duty; nor does he ever see anything out of common in the character of the men brought forth between midnight and dawn: the diverse secrets of the sparkling-eyed lovers, the sullen unfortunates, and the furtive predatory spirits are all unguessed by Mat, who is solely concerned as to whether his customers have the money to pay for what they order. In brief, Mat is a normal boy, simple, aggressive, and scornful of aught beyond his ken. He is a well-favored boy, with cheeks of an extraordinary redness, considering the nature of his occupation, and a valiant blue eye. His martial expression is further carried out by a stiff cockade or cow-lick of his sandy hair, mounting guard over his forehead.

At four o'clock one raw morning in November, Mat, in a fit of unusual industry, was washing the shelves of his little pie-cupboard, whistling loudly and unmelodiously to the humming accompaniment of the big coffee urn. Outside, Haverland was wrapped in an unearthly blackness and stillness. It was one of those nights when low-hanging clouds seem to be pressing the very breath out of the earth. Inside, it was precisely such a warm, bright, cozy little refuge as a weary and freezing traveler might dream of to keep himself going: the new varnish, the red panes (each depicting in clear glass the figure of a medieval gentleman in full dress), and the nickel and porcelain cooking utensils were all vying with each other in reflecting the shine of the electric lights. A sliding door occupies one side of the wagon; and across one end is built a little counter with a leaf that lifts to let Mat in and out. As he stands behind this counter, behind him again is another shelf, which carries his whole paraphernalia: to wit, a tiny gas stove, with a frying pan, and a hood to carry off the fumes, a little steam table for keeping the beans and chowder hot, the big nickel-plated coffee urn already mentioned, and the pie-cupboard with a screen door. Under this shelf is a cupboard and refrigerator a little larger than doll's size, and in the spare corners within reach of Mat's hand there are various boxes and shelves; for every inch of space in a lunch wagon must be utilized, just as in the cabin of a canal boat, which it resembles not a little.

“'MAY I COME IN AND GET WARM?” STAMMERED THE BOY'”

Outside the counter the remaining wall space is occupied by a narrow shelf set about with round stools. Here Mat's customers, after receiving their suppers at his counter, put them away at leisure. As many as eight men have been accommodated at one serving; but that, it must be confessed, was a tight squeeze.

On the raw morning in question Mat had had the wagon to himself for some little time, and in the ordinary course was not expecting another customer for three quarters of an hour—when, upon the arrival of the next car from town, at the end of its run, he was sure of at least two coffees for the chilled motorman and conductor. Nevertheless, in the middle of Matty's musical fantasia, the door was slowly pushed back, and a strange little figure, sidling into view, waited hesitatingly with a hand on the door, as if the slightest demonstration on Matty's part would instantly drive it forth again. It was that of a boy of twelve, though something about him seemed to hint at a greater maturity. He was clad in a well-patched coat and long trousers that had evidently been cut down from larger garments by inexperienced hands; for the mended knees of the original trousers flapped around his shins, the polished bends of the elbows stuck out half way to his wrists, and there was a quaint fullness to the breast of the coat and the seat of the trousers, which had been diminished with very indifferent success. This ample costume was topped with a battered, dusty derby of the kind a plasterer wears on working days, which came down over the curly brown hair to the ears of the wearer, enframing a pale, clean face, with great brown eyes distended by fear or anxiety, or both; and fresh, childish lips tightly compressed in what seemed to be some desperate determination. In one hand the boy carried a cheap little valise.

Mat glanced at the newcomer with careless suspicion; he saw nothing remarkable in the little fellow's clothes, for the boys who prowl around the outskirts of a great city at night are not over-particular as to their appearance.

“May I come in and get warm?” stammered the boy, in anything but the accents of a hardy little gamin of the pavements; this was the high-pitched voice of a home-bred child.

“Want to order anything?” demanded Mat.

“I haven't any money,” said the little fellow, with a painful blush.

“Oh, well, you can stay until a customer comes in,” said Mat, with a glance of boyish contempt at the weakling. He turned to his work again.

The little fellow seated himself on one of the round stools and, resting his elbow on the shelf, leaned his cheek wearily against his hand and obviously tried not to look hungry. The grateful warmth seemed to make him drowsy, and presently his eyes half closed. Mat's attention was arrested by a long-drawn sigh. Upon turning around, he saw that the boy's head had fallen forward, that his face had grown even whiter, and his lips faintly blue. Mat, who outside of business was anything but hard-hearted, ducked under the leaf of the counter and, putting an arm around the young one, lifted him up. He had always heard that the thing to do when a person fainted was to loosen his clothes at the neck; so he hastily proceeded to unfasten the boy's shirt. Suddenly he paused, and over his rosy face there crept a deeper tinge of red; with fumbling fingers he quickly did up the buttons again; his arm closed more protectingly around the slim body it held, and he gazed at the little fellow with a new and gentler light in his wary blue eyes.

Mat was sorely perplexed what to do next; but in a moment, without calling for any further efforts of resuscitation, the little fellow heaved another sigh and opened his eyes. As soon as he realized that Mat's arm was around him, he quickly straightened up and shrank away. Though not in accordance with the facts as now known to Mat, we will, in deference to his attire, continue to speak of the little one in the masculine gender.

“You sort of keeled over!” said Mat genially.

The little fellow visibly brightened at his friendlier tone. “I'm sorry,” he murmured apologetically.

“UNDER THE ELMS ON THE EDGE OF A LITTLE GREEN STANDS A LUNCH WAGON”

“HIS ARM CLOSED MORE PROTECTINGLY AROUND THE SLIM BODY IT HELD”

“Oh, that's all right!” said Mat heartily, returning to his place behind the counter. “All you need is some good hot grub. What'll you have?”

“I—I can't pay for it,” stammered the little fellow, with the same painful blush.

“Who asked you to pay for it?” demanded Mat truculently, forgetting his previous attitude on the subject.

“You are very kind,” said the little fellow gratefully.

“Kind nawthing!”” exclaimed Mat, in the same tone of disgust. “Ain't I been broke myself? Fellows has got to help each other out,” he added, with what was in Mat rare delicacy.

“A cup of coffee's enough,” said the little fellow modestly.

“Oh, he—” Matty checked himself in confusion. How to maintain the fiction of the little fellow's manliness and at the same time pay due heed to the choice of language suitable for gentler ears was a sadly complicated problem for one of Matty's simple ideas. “I mean,” he continued hastily, “you need something solid. Here, I'll give you apiece of pie to eat with the coffee while I flip you a hamburger. What kind of pie?”

“Gocoanut,”” murmured Matty's guest, thus pressed.

“I'll fry you an egg with the hamburger, too,” said Mat recklessly. “Eggs is fine and heartening!”

Directly afterwards a delightful sizzling sound filled the cabin. The odor of onions frying is no doubt very distressing to many delicate nostrils; but at four o'clock in the morning, to the appetite born of an all-night walk, it must be granted there are worse smells. At least, the little fellow thought so.

When the hamburger and its accompanying egg were served, Matty leaned his elbows on the counter and gazed at the little fellow sedately eating his supper from the shelf near by, with a strange, wild pleasure he did not understand, or seek to understand. What a vastly different meaning the close, curling hair, the great brown eyes, and the lips like rose leaves had taken on in five short minutes! When Matty remembered lifting the little fellow up, the arm that had held him tingled. But the ridiculous battered derby was an offense in his eyes.

“Why don't you take your hat off?” he suggested suddenly.

The little fellow, thinking his manners were at fault, snatched it off his head with a blush. At the sight of his distress Matty wished to explain that criticism was far from his intention, but he had no phrases comprehensive enough to express this feeling; all he could do was to spread the little one more bread and butter. As a matter of fact, Matty thought the little fellow's manners, which he would have gibed at in a male creature, uncommonly elegant. Removing the hat made a wonderful difference in his appearance. Matty gloated over the rich brown curls, which seemed to wink at the electric lights, and he was conscious of a novel wish to lay his cheek among them. He wondered dimly what made the little fellow look so sorry, and burned to right the wrong, whatever it might be. But hot food and drink were lighting up the eater's eyes with a renewed courage, and a faint pink stole into his cheeks. At the sight of it Matty beamed from every feature.

“Come far?” asked Matty.

“Not so very,” returned the little fellow evasively.

“Where you bound?”

“New York.”

Matty frowned.

“I'm almost there,” said the little one hopefully.

“Twelve mile,” said Matty discouragingly. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Get a job,” returned the little fellow stoutly. “Carry bundles, or run errands, or something. I'm stronger than I look,” he added, with a confident air.

Matty was much distressed at the thought of such innocence abroad in the city. “You don't know your way around,” he protested.

“A fellow can always ask,” said the little one, with an air.

Matty never thought of laughing. Bent on discouraging him, “The kids'll make a mock of your clothes,” he said.

He promptly wished he had bitten his tongue before the remark escaped him; for the little fellow's eyes slowly filled, and he choked over his food.

“They're all right!” cried Matty, desperately remorseful. “I wouldn't laugh at them. I'd bust any kid's head that laughed when I was around. But city kids is fierce!”

The same air of desperate determination shone through the little fellow's tears. “I'll fight them, if they won't let me be!” he proclaimed.

Something in the way this was said made Matty's eyelids prickle. “You don't want to have anything to do with them!” he urged earnestly. “They're bad clear through. Ain't you got no folks to take you in?”

The little fellow was mum on this point. “I'm not going to stay in New York long,” he said. “Just till I get enough money to take me to Scranton. I'm going to live with my brother there. He's the finest fellow!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “Never touches a drop!”

“Why don't you write and ask him for the money for your fare?” suggested Matty.

“He's got a family,” said the little one, in the tone of one who must be fair. “I haven't any claim on him. But when I get there I'll work out my board. You won't tell if they should ask you where I went?” he struck in, with sudden terror.

“Ah-h! What do you take me for!” snarled Matty, hurt and angry at the bare suggestion of such a thing.

For a few moments nothing was heard but the subdued humming of the big coffee urn. The little fellow, having finished his supper, crossed his legs and leaned back, nursing one knee, in what he thought was a very manly attitude; meanwhile he was scowling fiercely to counteract the effect of the blushes that would rise under Matty's searching gaze. Matty was watching him in great perplexity as to how he might devise a means to delay the little fellow's rash attempt upon the city. Finally he could contain himself no longer.

“Scranton is hundreds of miles off!” he burst out. “You'd never make it in the world! Why, as soon as ever it's daylight you'll be found out!”

The secret had escaped! The little fellow dropped his knee and stared at Matty with wild, affrighted eyes.

“What do you mean?” shaped his lips.

Matty ducked under the leaf of the counter again and approached the little one's side. “You're no fellow!” he said, with rough, unaccustomed tenderness, unconsciously seizing a little hand in his earnestness and pressing it against his cheek. “Any one could see it with half an eye! You're too pretty and good and nice! Go back where you come from and get your own clothes. I'll go with you if you want. I won't let any one touch you. You hadn't ought to go into town. You don't know what you'd be up against!”

She slipped off the stool and, snatching her hand free (the masculine pronoun may as well be dropped), backed away from him. “You must be crazy!” she said, white and desperate. “Of course I'm a fellow! My name is Harry Covey.”

“You can't fool me!” said Matty. “I know!”

An impending deluge of tears left her no resource but precipitate flight. With a miserable little offhand air, which was mocked by her shaking voice, she said: “Well, it's good your thinking can't make me a girl. I must be getting along. Thank you for your kindness.”

“Don't go!” cried Matty, in distress. “I was only joking,” he hurriedly added. “Of course you're a fellow!”

She was already outside; but she had no sooner set foot to the ground than she swung about and, darting inside the wagon again, pulled the door shut and leaned against it, sick with fear.

“He's out there in the road!” she gasped. “Talking to a policeman!—My father! He'll surely kill me! Hide me! Oh, hide me!”

Matty wasted no time in getting the situation clear in his head, but, instantly seizing the little one's hand, he pulled her after him under the leaf of the counter. Under the solid part was a set of loose shelves on which Matty kept bread and other supplies. He pulled out the shelves, letting the food fall where it would, and into the niche thus vacated thrust the little one, effectually concealing her from the view of any one in the body of the wagon. She had just room enough to sit down. Matty had no sooner straightened his back than the door of the lunch wagon was slid back with a bang that made all the red panes rattle and, upon admitting the form of a brawny working-man, was closed with equal violence. Matty saw that this display of force was merely the result of a muscular habit of action. The man actually had the manner of one who seeks to close a door moderately; and he was plainly unconscious as yet of the proximity of his daughter.

The newcomer's bulk seemed to fill the entire van. It was not that he was so tall, for he looked almost dumpy; but that was the effect of his enormous breadth. His bull neck was forced forward by a thick roll of muscle across his shoulders, and this had the effect of making his great arms hang down, almost to his knees, it seemed. His swarthy, flushed face was cast in the unemotional mold that goes with great strength; and with the lowering, uneasy eye of the hard drinker, he had that grim, satiric mouth that, in elders, is such a terror to youth. Truly it was a formidable antagonist who faced Matty, and the little one's fear was explained. But at this moment the boy was ready to rejoice in any odds: his chin stuck out aggressively, and his eyes shot forth a steely spark, as he gave the counter a careless swipe with his towel.

The big man lounged in front of him with an exaggerated air of indifference. “Has there been a lad in here inside an hour?” he inquired in an offhand tone. “A little fellow with a white face, and pants like they was made for the front legs of an elephant, same girth all the way down?”

“There's been no boy in here,” answered Matty, with entire truth.

The man elevated his eyebrows, which in him was tantamount to a shrug. “Well, then, I guess the little devil'll have to shoulder his own pick,” he drawled, with the jocose air under which, in bar-rooms, every feeling is disguised. “Blamed if I'll walk the streets of town after him!”

At this display of apparent callousness, Matty's wrath began to rise. He felt it necessary, however, to curb it until he was better armed with information. To that end he inquired carelessly if the boy had run away.

“Just so!” said the man, dropping on the stool nearest the counter—the same stool the little one had occupied a minute or two before. “Lit out from Roslyn somewheres between nine and ten-thirty. I've followed him sixteen mile along a road as black as the pit, picking up a word here and there which kept me on his track. I thought sure I'd nab him before coming to the city line. Who'd ever have thought she'd have——” He pulled himself up and glanced uneasily at Matty to see if his slip had been noticed.

“I thought you said a boy!” said Matty quickly.

“It looks like a boy,” said the man doggedly, “and that's enough for the public!”

A purple spot burned in the middle of each of Matty's red cheeks. “You take it pretty easy,” he said.

The man looked at him grimly. “My lad,” he drawled, not without dignity, “the feelings of a full-growed man ain't to be so easy read off by a sliver like you!”

This slur on his youth at such a moment was too much for Matty's self-control. He was keyed up for great deeds. “Boy or girl,” he said boldly, “I know what drove the kid away from home.”

“And what might that be?” drawled the man, with grim, affected surprise.

Matty met his eye squarely. “Booze,” he said laconically.

The man slowly raised his great bulk from the stool and pressed his huge knuckles on the edge of Matty's counter. A deeper tinge of red crept under his swarthy skin, and his eyes glittered dangerously. “And how do you know that?” he asked softly.

“I see it in your face,” said Matty coolly.

The man's eyes blazed on Matty, and he raised his clenched fists in a frightful gesture of wrath. But the lad was nerved by a glimpse of a white, appealing face, bending over and looking out from under the counter; and his eyes were lit by a deeper flame than the man's own. They did not flinch; and the man's arms, arrested in mid-air, dropped to his sides, and the clenched fingers relaxed. He turned to the stool again and, sinking heavily on it, appeared to stare hard at the sauce bottles on the shelf.

“Yesterday I would have killed a man for less,” he said thickly. “But now—well, I guess it's coming to me!”

Matty was man enough not to pursue his advantage too far. He busied himself in picking up the things that had dropped behind the counter when he pulled out the shelves, managing to touch the little one's curls, by accident, as it were, in passing, and, as he stooped down, grinning reassuringly into her face.

Presently the man turned around on the stool with an expression of face that seemed to indicate that he was anxious to justify himself under Matty's charge. “Me and the kid was always good pals at ordinary times,” he said simply. “But since she was a baby she was that comical scared of a man in liquor, I just couldn't help plaguing her whenever I had downed a few. Her ma used to hide her when I come home. Since the old woman died and the kid's brother went off and got married, them times of getting full was more frequent than formerly. It's expected of a widow man. Folks would think he was glad to get rid of his woman if he come home sober after she was gone. Well, when the kid begun to grow up, it seemed kind of unnatural that her, almost a woman growed, should have such a fool scare of her dad whenever he had an edge on, and I got sore-like on her, though a good girl she was and none handier around the house. Last night I got fuller than usual along of Clancy fresh-painting his place, but not to say loaded, for I counted every house on the way home and picked my own gate first go. But the kid, she riled me with her white face, disgusted and sick-like at the sight of her natural father; and in the end—well, I sort of raised my hand to her. Not a blow, you understand, just a little slap—but it was the first. She must have been cutting down her brother's old clothes all to-day, and to-night when I come home—she was gone.”

“It was a cowardly act,” said Matty.

“I ain't saying I don't regret it,” muttered the man.

“It's up to you to take the pledge!” said Matty.

There was a gleam of interest, tempered by suspicion, in the man's eye. “You don't catch Dave Covey tying up to no salvation shark,” said he.

“I'll wirte you up an oath myself,” said Matty eagerly. “A good hard one you couldn't wiggle out of.”

“Let her go!” said the man facetiously. “But mind, no hallelujahs!”

Matty had already dug out a pencil and a small square of wrapping paper, and was setting to work with a will. For several minutes there was no sound to be heard in the lunch wagon except the humming of the urn, the breathing of the three people, and the spasmodic scrunching of Mat's pencil, as he bore down hard. When he approached the end of his composition, he paused and with averted head asked the young one's name, waiting for the blessed sound of it with strained ears.

“Between you and me, Emma,” said the man.

It was satisfactory to Matty. He wrote it down and also, as it were, put the name carefully away in his mind. He handed the paper across the counter, and waited anxiously while the man read it over. Upon completing it, Dave glanced furtively at Matty with what, had he been vainer, Matty would have known was unwilling admiration.

“Pretty tight!” he said in his offhand way. “But put in hard cider. Clancy always has it for them that has swore off.”

Matty made the desired correction and returned the paper.

“You won't blow on me?” said the man, with ill-concealed anxiety.

“Sure, I will!” said Matty boldly. “How can a man keep a pledge unless he knows everybody knows he's swore it?”

The man shrugged his eyebrows again. “It's coming to me,” he said quietly.

Without any suggestion from Matty, big Dave then stood up and, squaring himself, raised his right hand aloft and delivered his oath in a great voice, while Matty stood by with the faint, abstracted smile of an author.

“I, Dave Covey,” he read from the paper, “solemnly swears not to and binds himself not to touch or drink a drop or any other quantity of wine, beer, or spirituous liquors or hard cider for three years from to-night. And if he breaks his oath may the fires of hell light upon me; and if he breaks his oath I hereby give up all my rights and claims as a father on my said daughter, Emma Covey, for ever and ever, so help me God, Amen.”

The instrument was duly signed by Dave and witnessed by Matty, who subsequently put it in the pie-cupboard for safe-keeping. Upon hearing the oath read, the little figure under the counter had evinced a disposition to emerge, but was restrained by a touch of Matty's foot.

“That was a good thought about the kid,” said Dave reflectively. “That will hold me to it. But what made you hit on three years, now?”

Matty was drawing a cup of black coffee for Dave to drink to the signing of the pledge, and the question took him off his guard. “I'll be twenty,” he said simply. “I don't think a man ought to marry before then.”

“So-ho!” drawled Dave, with his inimitable affectation of polite surprise. “Seems to me you're taking a pretty long shot!”

Matty recovered himself promptly. “She must have pluck,” he said, as carelessly as Dave himself. “I'm willing to risk it.”

“I never said but what she was as homely as a hedge fence,” remarked Dave.

“Nor did you say but what she wasn't,” retorted Matty.

“Well, I do say we've got to find her first,” said her father.

This provided the opening Matty had been waiting for. “The trouble with kids when they light out,” he said carelessly, “they'd come home quick enough, only they're scared of what they'll get.”

“If I could find my little daughter,” said Dave Covey, in a voice that was earnest enough in spite of the jocose drawl, “would I larrup her for running away? Not on your life, my lad! I'd apologize to her, I would. I'd say to her, 'Emmy, my dear, you're more of a man than your drunken old pa!'”

There was a frantic scramble underneath the counter, as of a gigantic mouse suddenly startled into action. Matty had a glimpse of a pair of baggy little trousers darting under the leaf of the counter as the little one precipitated herself on her astonished parent. He turned his back, and, with hot ears, clattered among his dishes. The little one uttered not a sound; but her father expressed over and over, in varying tones, an unalterable conviction that he would be condemned. When Matty ventured to turn around, big Dave was still sitting on the stool and holding the curly-headed little one close to his side. Father and daughter were cheek to cheek, and the sight of this parental privilege gave Matty an envious ache somewhere under his necktie.

“You're a smart kid, all right,” said Dave to Matty, with a grin of admiration that made the boy's heart swell. “All I can say is, I give my consent to you know what, in three years.”

The little one, who was one great blush, would not look anywhere near Matty, but kept slyly tugging at her father to be gone. When she finally got him started, she pulled him down and whispered in his ear.

“The lad says I must pay for the damage he did your stock,” drawled Dave.

Matty flared up instantly. “I won't take a penny!” he shouted, with ridiculous force, considering the size of the place.

Still keeping a careful back to Matty, the little one whispered another message in her father's ear.

“He says will you come and eat it out next Sunday, then, and be interjooced to him in her natural sex,” said Dave.

“Sure!” cried the delighted Matty.